Poetry Meme: The Six Wives Edition
by AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: A collection of half-drabbles inspired by poetry, written for the six wives.


The meme itself, taken from LiveJournal:

1: Pick five fandoms.

2: Visit this site ( plagiarist poetry/random/) to find your first RANDOM POEM OF POWER. Write down the 5th line (yes, even if it's an E.E. Cummings poem and you wind up with an apostrophe). Repeat five times and - you guessed it - list 'em in alphabetical order! (No cheating, mind! This is a challenge and it's always been about creativity.)

3: I think you can see where this is going. Write a very quick 50-word half-drabble for each fandom (try to do it all in one sitting - make your brain explode!), using the line from the poem as a prompt. You don't have to include it in the half-drabble - it's just inspiration.

4: Bravo! Have a cookie.

I played with this meme a little; instead of five fandoms, I decided to write a half-drabble for each of Henry VIII's wives.

* * *

 **Katherine of Aragon:** _And as the Rose appears, (I have a Bird in spring, by Emily Dickinson)_

With trembling hands, Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, lifts the white veil. He exhales slowly, painfully, as the face of his future queen appears. Locks of red-tinged lava framing elegantly crafted features. Eyes like tiny tranquil pools of crystalline water. Cheeks tinted with the pale, perfect pink of the rose.

 **Anne Boleyn:** _Freedom to starve or slave! (Enemy Conscript, by Robert Service)_

Anne stalks away from Henry's outstretched arms and recriminations. She is through with empty promises and broken dreams and the bitter, predictable taste of disappointment. She has wasted enough of her youth on this sinking ship; at least if she bails, she'll have freedom to suffer on her own terms.

 **Jane Seymour:** _In rosy youth, he cast away (For Meng Hao-Jan, by Li Po)_

King Henry is still handsome, but he is not the strapping golden prince he was in his youth. Queen Jane watches her husband's visage, each day engraving its lines ever more deeply, and steadily ignores whispers that perhaps responsibility for the empty royal nursery lay not with Katherine and Anne.

 **Anne of Cleves ("Anna"):** _Nobody know "his Father"— (Dust is the only Secret, by Emily Dickinson)_

Her new husband likes her not, and in one fell swoop, all her heady hopes for England perish. She will never hear sweet nothings whispered into her ears early in the morning, feel a babe quicken within her womb, or grab his father's hand and place it upon her belly.

 **Kathryn "Kitty" Howard:** _Or that I'd ask the sorcerers (You thought I was that type, by Anna Akhmatova)_

On her last night alive, Kitty cannot stop grasping at hope. Surely she can ask _someone_ for help: Uncle Norfolk, Hal, Joan, Lady Rochford, Henry, God, even a sorcerer. But in the end, all she can ask for is the chopping block, so that she may practice for her execution.

 **Katherine "Kate" Parr:** _That sowed the flower, he preferred— (Although I put away his life, by Emily Dickinson)_

Kate Parr has always been a woman of staunch conviction and formidable intelligence, steady and sturdy as an oak tree. But the roving hoe of the King of England's desire transforms her into a cloying, dainty bluebell. He wishes to sow her to his preferences, and so she must yield.

* * *

 **Bonus half-drabbles:**

 **Henry VIII:** _His thoughts were bare, his words were brittle, (Rose Leaves, by Robert Service)_

When the messenger comes from Richmond Palace, Henry barricades himself in his chambers, shunning all save stone-faced Katherine. Sitting next to her in guttering candlelight, he grasps for something, _anything_ , to say, but in the end they sit in silence bare and brittle as the empty cradle in their nursery.

 **Princess Mary:** _The oilstove falls, the rain, (Mad Day in March, by Philip Levine)_

Sometimes at night, when Mary lies in her too-small cot in her too-small chamber, she imagines hurling the candle on her nightstand to the ground and watching Hatfield House burn. She never acts on the impulse, of course, but it still sends a shiver of a thrill down her spine.


End file.
